Consciousness to the planets; rockets of glory and doom - Part 18
The Governor meets Boyer and the captured twins
He rarely made appearances. In fact there were rumours that he was not even alive. Was he just a modern day man behind a curtain, with even smaller hands and wilder aims than the underwhelming Wizard of Oz? Boyer tried to hide her surprise when she saw him standing at the entrance of the compound when they arrived.
From the moment they were within sight of the huge wall, she could tell that Corridor West was on alert. A near complete lockdown. Layers of drones hovered in the sky, their far-seeing lenses scanned the boundaries outside and inside the fortified boundary.
The wall was always ominous and, though she was careful who she said it to, inspiring. A true marvel of engineering. Concrete and steel wove in and out of the topography. In some places it was simply a droid or drone presence. Monitored twenty-four-hours each and every day. Never a blink.
The ability of the human mind to imagine and for the industrial tech tools of the day to bring the vision to life was truly hard to comprehend. Further augmented by the powers of machine learning, the walls that enclosed the rich human and natural resources was Babel-like.
And the Governor, who waited at the doors, seemed to not yet have learned the lesson of that ancient text. Instead he reached for the heavens, not so much to grab hold of its glory and wonders, but to take hold of it for himself.
That was Boyer’s take, which she was also careful about who she said so to. Bring consciousness to the planets, was the Gov’s modus operandi. It could drive her mad if she let herself think too long on it, how the entire premise of the effort to reach the stars was built on a faulty view of reality.
It was like she and all of the people in the Corridor were on one big jet, but the navigation was off. The pilot of the whole ship was headed in a direction that would never arrive at the destination they intended. And there was nothing any of the passengers could really do about it.
Is this what leadership was like?
Before the blackout, when the conflict in Europe reached its pique, there was a famous video that circulated around the world. As high-level talks about the future of empires were underway, leaders of nation states in what was then the European Union returned from Kiev on a bullet train. They were caught on camera doing lines of cocaine.
At the time, the potential destruction of humanity was a real possibility. War and peace, doom or salvage, were on the negotiating table, along with lines of cocaine and drug paraphernalia. As the cameras caught the surprising moment, revealing what many long suspected as a cabal of lechery at the highest level, the veil was once-for-all yanked.
Whatever validity or moral authority the self-important world leaders claimed to hold dissolved the way a tab of ecstasy disappears on a wet tongue. Boyer recalled the moment the Governor often cited in his rise to his pinnacle of power from his regular public addresses he made when he was first ascendant. It was a metaphor that still had relevance today.
“The bullet train to humanity’s doom,” the Governor called it. It was rhetoric that convinced people that needed little convincing to try something—anything—new.
Is he leading us anywhere different? Boyer had asked the Bishop, her eyes stung with tears. She thought he might, hoped for it. Not because she put hope in any man, but because she loved this planet, and the people needed some sort of relief, a reprieve.
Can anyone? Was all the Bishop asked in return. She was angry at him for saying it.
Even as that anger flared like the blurry, orange-red circle of a star-aimed booster, she knew he was right. Boyer had time to reflect on that anger since. Why was it so pronounced? Why, even though she knew no human leader could measure up, fill the void in the heart, had it burned so hot?
She was angry that even though he didn’t do illicit drugs or belong to the inbred club that lusted for power, willing to do anything—or anyone—to sustain it, the Governor still didn’t hold the answers. Angry on behalf of everyone who simply wanted to live a life of peace, who longed to find a corner of the world for a quiet life whose lives would be upended and disrupted because of the system the Governor would replace.
Angry for the common woman and man who were the collateral damage of the system, who had to sort through the carnage of men who played god. Sorry to be fools, at the mercy of the men who operated the bullet train to doom.
There was a lot of anger to sort through. But the Governer wasn’t on a train. He was on a rocket ship. And he was taking humanity off planet to the stars.
The droid- and drone-led caravan brought them within the city walls. Boyer watched the twins as they drove through the empty streets. She looked for any sign of emotion. They were stoic. Unblinking. She blushed when she realized Joyride was grinning back at her, the right side of his mouth curled up. A dimple she could press the entire print of her index finger into on his cheek. She looked back out the window when he caught her stare. She only glanced at him again when she saw his head move to look out the window, turning in his seat as the EV slowed.
“The Gov,” Foxtrot whispered, stating what they all saw. There was a shared sense of surprise, disbelief, awe and disgust all at once. The hair on the back of her neck stood. The myth of the man was so large it was strange to see him. He stood alone in front of the glass building they arrived at, a centralized data-processing plant in Calgary on the edge of the Bow river. The hydro-powered facility was a critical hub for crypto mining and surveillance.
She didn’t know what it meant that he came to them here in the city and didn’t summon them to the 49th where he was rumoured to hide in a facility below ground that was built to withstand a nuclear blast and the nuclear winter that would follow.
He stood alone, but a line of droids flanked in two rows on either side of him. Ten in front of him on each side, between the caravan and the Gov, ten behind him on each side between him and the building. The forty droids, kitted out with more weaponry than some militias could ever dream to be in possession of, towered in the space, eight feet tall each. They had humanoid shape, but their height was meant to intimidate and dwarf the rogue humans they were designed to eradicate. Their oval heads were opaque and glowed a dim gold in the dark night.
“If only the General could see us now,” Joyride whispered.
“I wouldn’t mention his name if I were you,” Boyer advised. Faulted men with faulted thinking throttling passengers towards their doom.
Their EV came to a stop. From where they sat, the three passengers could see the Governor puff out his chest. He stood too far away to make eye contact with them, but it was clear he sized them up.
He raised his hand so that his arm was parallel to the ground. His finger slightly raised. As he did so, an image flashed in Boyer’s mind. She suddenly remembered a gift the Bishop brought back with him for her on one of his visits to Europe. It was a postcard he purchased at the Vatican, during the intense period when the Holy See exerted much pressure on him and the entire community in New Eden.
She could see it now: a postcard of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, the famous image of the fully nude first father, his forearm on his knee, leaning back on a green hill. God leaning forward, his finger fully extended, vigorously moving toward his created son. But Adam’s finger was turned down, so close to touching the divine, within an inch, but forever not taking hold of God’s hand.
Humanity choosing its doom.
The door hissed open and two of the lethal droids stepped toward the vehicle. “Please step out of the EV, ma’am,” said the droid that stepped into the doorway. Boyer looked back at the twins, the last time she would see them on this earth. She raised her hand in the sign of the cross.
“May God go with you, may his face shine upon you, may he give you his peace,” she whispered.
The cool air surprised her when she stepped out of the vehicle. Alberta nights could be unkind. There was probably a frost warning in effect, even though it was well into Spring. She hugged her arms to herself to keep warm.
“Did they harm you?” It was the Governor. He was removing his jacket, putting it around her shoulders before she could refuse.
“No,” she winced as he placed heavy canvas jacket on her shoulders. He looked at her unconvinced. Her shoulder needed attention.
“For every scar or wound they inflicted, we will administer ten more.”
“They’re just boys,” she said, without thinking.
“They are enemies of the Corridor.”
“Remember mercy, Governor. Remember mercy.” She held up the cross that was around her neck. He stepped back, as though struck.
“You are just like your Bishop.”
“If I could be half the person he was, consider me blessed.”
Boyer leaned back as the Governor stepped toward her, his toes touched her toes. She could feel his knees in her thighs. He gently touched her face, traced his thumb along her cheekbone to her lip. “You’re safe now,” he said. “You can rest here tonight.”
“Thank you,” she said, gratitude, not resistance, the quickest way to placate him. The moment, mercifully, was disrupted, when the twins emerged from the EV. The Governor stepped away from her and looked at them, their youth and vitality palpable. He seemed to breathe in their presence, sniffed the air. The moment was electric.
“We bring greetings from the General,” Foxtrot said.
“Oh?” The Governor responded, impressed at their defiance. “So, you have a message from him for me?”
“He will deliver it himself,” Foxtrot said.
“In due time,” Joyride added, his grin a permanent fixture of his face.
The Governor looked them over but said no more. Boyer couldn’t help herself: “What will you do with them?” she asked.
“We want to be off-worlded,” Foxtrot said, before the Governor could respond.
To this he raised his eyebrow. It was a right any person could claim, whether inside or outside the walls of Corridor West, a right the Governor himself bestowed upon all, something he guaranteed. It was a rare, desperate request few made, especially those who would otherwise be Gamed.
The Governor stared at them, assessing their claim. It was a potent moment and Boyer held her breath. Was this their plan all along? she wondered.
“I will grant your request,” the Governor said as he turned. Foxtrot sighed.
The Governor placed his hand on Boyer’s back and guided her toward the entrance. The line of droids behind and before them turned in the same motion to face each other. Two droids took hold of Foxtrot and Joyride and pushed them forward. “But before the Red Planet, you will also be Gamed,” The Governor said over his shoulder. “I want to know what they know.”
Boyer said a silent prayer after she saw Joyride’s face. The grin was gone, and for the first time he had a look of fear she would never unsee.